VANCOUVER — Soccer attracts more corporate money than any other sport on the planet in a growing global sponsorship market worth more than $40 billion a year.

“It's a no-brainer,” IFM North America senior vice-president Derek Mager said in an interview Friday. “Soccer is the world's number-one sport and the highest-participation sport, so the numbers are staggering.”

An IFM review of new sponsorship deals in 2011 shows that soccer topped the list with $2.7 billion in new deals — more than double the $1.275 billion in new Olympics sponsorships and the $1.085 billion in new NFL deals.

The study said the total value of global sports sponsorship will reach $45 billion by 2014 and surpass gate revenues as the sports industry's largest income generator.

Mager said companies backed off slightly from investing in sports in 2009 — following the late-2008 global financial meltdown — but investment has since grown by about five per cent a year.

“If you do it well and activate and connect your message to your audience, it's actually worth the huge cost that you see on paper,” he said.

Telecommunications firms have become increasingly important players in sports sponsorship and the IFM study said telecoms spent the most money on new deals last year — $1.29 billion compared with $1.23 billion from sports clothing companies.

That trend has become clear in the Vancouver market — with Rogers owning the naming rights to the Vancouver Canucks home arena, Bell being a major 2010 Olympics and Vancouver Whitecaps sponsor and Telus seemingly on the verge of acquiring the naming rights for BC Place Stadium.

“That Bell-Telus rivalry kind of reminds me of the beer wars back in the early 1990s, which is fantastic for sports properties,” Mager said.

Insurance companies have also jumped into sports in a big way, with MetLife's $400-million naming rights deal for New Meadowlands Stadium being the second most expensive new deal of 2011.

“They're following what some financial institutions have done to separate themselves from their competitors and finding this kind of marketing shows a return,” Mager said.

He said the uncertain economic times have have caused many companies to opt for one-year deals, when almost everything used to have a minimum term of three years. The most common sponsorships last year were valued between $150,000 and $500,000, with an average length of 2.3 years.

The study said the popularity of sponsoring individual athletes has actually increased since the Tiger Woods scandal of late 2009. The number of personality sponsorship deals remained steady at seven per cent of all deals throughout 2008, 2009 and 2010 and then jumped to 13 per cent last year.

Notable athlete sponsorship agreements last year included Cristiano Ronaldo's $9-million deal with Castrol and David Beckham's $6.375-million deal with U.K. supermarket Sainsbury's.

Woods lost major sponsors such as Accenture, Gatorade and Gillette after news broke of his marital infidelities but he has since renewed his old relationship with Rolex and even signed some new sponsorship deals — including sports nutrition firm Fuse Science.

“TV ratings go way up when he's in the field,” Mager said. “The Tiger factor is still huge, whether people want to admit it or not. He's still one of the most recognizable and popular athletes on the planet so a lot of that money will come back, especially as he looks to be regaining his form.”

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